


three hundred gold

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ass-Kicking, Beating, Brienne is sad, Dismemberment, Gang Rape, Gen, Jaime is not very helpful, Mutilation, Rape, Rape Aftermath, SAD and BAD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 03:29:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20167408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Three hundred gold dragons isn’t enough to save anyone.





	three hundred gold

**Author's Note:**

> written 08 August 2019.

It takes three hours for her to break down and cry.

Three hours.

Not a long time, in the eternal scheme of things. Likely the gods don’t even notice three hours. Why would they? They’re busy watching rivers changing track to curve and break, and mountains rise and fall, or whatever it is the gods spend their time doing. Sure as fuck they’re not answering prayers.

Brienne doesn’t pray, anyway. She yells and fights when the Mummers beat her, right up to when one says _hold your tongue or I’ll make you swallow it_

& then she’s quiet. Mostly.

Jaime stays quiet. He’s tied to a tree, there’s bark in his hair and bugs crawling in his clothes, and he can do nothing but listen while the night comes down, down.

Which is worse — her scream, or the men’s laughter? Their grunts, or her silence?

The men finish with her body and finish laughing about it — how she felt and what she did, how funny it was to see such a big dumb bitch fight, how strong she was, how none of her rage mattered at all.

Now the Mummers enjoy the rest of the righteous. Now a soft gentle rain falls. And Brienne finally cries.

The rain splutters and fizzes against the embers.

The fire was always too far away to give Jaime warmth and it’s stupid to miss something that didn’t help him — but he still wants it back. Maybe it would distract her. Maybe she’d stop making that horrible choking sound.

He’d warned her. _They’re going to hurt you. Don’t fight back._

_Is that what you would do? _she’d said, and_ They’ll have to work for anything they get from me_. Brave girl, for all the good it did her.

_Stupid girl,_ he thinks. Maybe she’d be less bruised - less abused — if she hadn’t been so goddamn brave.

On and on, she sobs.

On and on the rain comes, now heavier and now lighter.

It’s fucking cold.

She’s a fair distance from him, tied to a tree of her very own. He can’t see much but the edges of her form. The flat plane of her forehead or cheek, damp with rain and tears.

At least she’s still clothed.

Rather: she is again wearing clothes. He heard that part of the evening. _Take them off or Zollo will cut them off, and his knife hand ain’t as steady as it might be._

Jaime didn’t hear whatever she said in reply, but he heard a dull thump and then her gasp and groan of pain, and he heard the offer to take out her tongue and maybe a few fingers too, or a foot, why not?

And then the men started on her and he didn’t hear anything else — nothing but them — not for a long time.

He had tried not to listen. _I’ll thank you for privacy _Hoat had said, and then there was an argument, and something about _both of us at once,_ and the sound of Brienne moaning in pain.

If she died, he would kill them all.

_I’d make them kill me,_ he had said.

_Would you indeed _said Brienne. _And exactly how would you make them do that?_

They weren’t going to kill her, no matter what she said to them. Not intentionally. He’d watched Rickard Stark boil alive in his own armor, he stood and watched and waited and _waited_ for him to finally fucking die, screaming and screaming in his long agony.

There was nothing human in that armor by the end of it. Stark was only a raw voice and the smell of burning.

Maybe Jaime wasn’t human any longer by the end of it, either. How else could he stand and allow that to happen? How else could he have listened to her, tonight?

Brienne. “Wench ...”

Are you alive? he wants to say. Are you human still?

She cries.

“Please stop,” Jaime says, loud enough so she can hear. “I don’t like it.” It’s foolish and cruel to tell her this. _Stop being upset at what happened to you, it’s distressing me._

At least he’s honest.

She turns to the sound of his voice. “Jaime?”

“Can’t you see?” Gods, they haven’t taken out her _eyes, _have they —

“My — my face is swollen up.”

“Oh, good.”

“Good?”

“It can only improve your beauty,” he says. It’s a cruel thing to say and he doesn’t know why he said it, he didn’t mean it, he wants to apologize —

— and Brienne laughs. It‘s a choking, wretched sound, no humor in it, and she groans at the end. “Don’t make me laugh. They kicked my ribs — broke them, I think.”

He’s never made her laugh before. “Are you ... did they hurt you?” He knows the answer. Didn’t he hear it? Hoat made her scream, and Hoat was only the first.

But he has to ask.

She laughs again. “No. I’m perfectly fine. Did they hurt you?”

“No.”

“They will,” she says.

Jaime shakes his head, realizes she probably can’t see it, and says: “They won’t. They _can’t_. I matter too much to kill me.”

“They didn’t kill me,” says Brienne.

“They won’t hurt me,” Jaime repeats: and he says it to himself over and over all the night long, while the stars fade into morning and Brienne, exhausted, finally falls asleep.

Jaime says it when Vargo comes over to check on him and he says it when the hatchet lifts up and he’s in the middle of another repeat when the blade comes down and his hand disappears behind it, and then even he can’t lie to himself, not anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> i certainly appreciate the idea that at least one damn woman gets out of Westeros without being raped, but ... i never quite believed this part in ASOIAF/GOT. 
> 
> Nobody’s going to leave Brienne alone while they hurt Jaime. why would they? the Lannisters are a family to be reckoned with and Jaime himself (as he cruelly points out) is important. 
> 
> Meanwhile, who gives a shit about tiny little Tarth? Who is afraid of Selwyn — a lord so unimpressive even Jaime can barely remember his name & sigil?
> 
> “Westeros: If you lived here, you’d be dead now”


End file.
